NYC ratchets up security for 9/11 commemoration
To fortify New York, federal and local law enforcement officials are piling security plans atop security plans, making Sunday not just the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, but also a milestone in a decade-long state of heightened alert.
The defense portfolio includes thousands of New York and District of Columbia police officers, including divers, bomb technicians and countersnipers, many putting in days of overtime; National Guardsmen; and FBI intelligence analysts. Sunday's commemoration at the site where the World Trade Center was destroyed — and where a new memorial will be unveiled — will be attended by President Barack Obama, former President George W. Bush and other dignitaries. Plans for the show of force stretch back at least to May, when a notebook filled with Osama bin Laden's musings about a potential terrorist strike on the 9/11 anniversary was discovered in the al-Qaida leader's compound.
But they intensified last week upon word of a new threat. Intelligence analysts were poring Saturday over aviation and other travel records in an attempt to identify two men, both U.S. citizens, whom a CIA informer heard had been dispatched by al-Qaida to mount car-bomb attacks in New York or Washington, officials said. In the jargon of threat assessment, the report was called "credible" because the source had been reliable in the past and 'specific" because it described a mode of attack and geographic targets. But it was also labeled "unconfirmed" because it came from one source whose information was second- or third-hand.
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